Fonda Fair Butter Sculpture

By Betty Myers

Once a public record, always a public record

Or so says this story about consolidated animal feeding operations, or CAFO s in Idaho.
An Idaho Supreme Court decision there maintains that feedlot nutrient management plans that are not held in government hands are still accessible under freedom of information laws. This may mean that even if National Animal Identification databases are held in private hands activist groups can access them. This has been a big sticking point to implementation of the plan as no one wants every Tom, Dick and troublemaker in the country to know how many animals they own, where they are, how old they are etc.

Bucky hunt affects everyone

Last night we had to rescue the girls. The transmission on the truck started giving them trouble on the big hill on the way home from college. We told them to find a safe place to pull over to wait, and hurried to town for some transmission fluid. Then we hustled south to meet them. It was a roughly half an hour drive to where they were parked in the driveway of an old hay barn.
With some added fluid, Liz and the boss limped home with the little Dakota, while Beck and I followed in the van.

However, what happened while they waited made us even more aware of just how intense and frightening the hunt for fugitive Bucky Phillips is, for both civilians and police.
The girls had been waiting there by the road for only a few moments when a county sheriff pulled up behind them after giving them a thorough once over.


He exited his car, strapped on a bullet-resistant vest and loosened his side arm before approaching the pick up to ask if the girls needed assistance. They explained the circumstances, and were very, very glad to see him. Becky tried to screw up her nerve to ask him to stay with them while they waited for us, but she couldn’t quite get the words out.

I’ll bet he would have been glad to. At least I am sure he checked to see if they got away all right. There is a very noticeable police presence on the roads even here, miles from the search scene. I for one am glad to see them. I turn the news on a dozen times a day hoping to hear that he has been captured. We are keeping things very thoroughly buttoned up and locked and dogs are loose in the house when we are out. I wish this would end.

Steve Irwin killed

I couldn't believe it when I heard the news this morning. Even though he was famous for taking risks, it seemed as if he staged his stunts carefully enough to get away with them. At any rate he was a television icon, easily recognized and sometimes fun.


Here at Northview it was very popular to make teasing remarks in his instantly recognized Australian accent. Becky loved to sneak up on me and say, "Here we have an example of the very rare mommy bird, a very rare species, very rare," in awkward Aussie. This was followed by a sometimes much needed hug. I guess it won't be funny any more.


For all of the controversy over his methods, Irwin certainly made an effort to remove our fear of dangerous reptiles, handling them as if they were cute and cuddly. He was killed by a stingray barb to his chest.

Bossed around by little birds

*goldenrod on the long lawn*

Yesterday when I came in from chores the tame chickadees were ticked right off. You see when a friend gave the boss about a million old Holstein World magazines, not quite all of them made it upstairs to the spare bedroom. A hefty few languished on the back porch….smack dab on top of the bag of sunflower seeds. I was too lazy to move them (besides the principal of the thing) so the wild birds have been on their own.

However, the little black and white birds had had enough deprivation. They clung, up side down, to the lower branches of the honey locust and cursed me mightily in chickadeese.

Dee! Dee, dee, dee!
Peep, dee, dee…Peep! Dee!

I had no trouble translating. So I hoisted those smelly old magazines in their battered, crumbling boxes off the birdseed bag, along with Alan’s blue tackle box and spinning rod, (which have been there since camp). The feeders were so starkly devoid of sustenance that I took them down and hauled them inside to fill them. As soon as I hung them back up chickadees lined up on the clothesline still chirping impatiently for their turn at the seed spouts.

It was well worth it. This morning a sassy male cardinal did a hummingbird act in front of the plastic tube feeder trying to extract a seed. Cardinals can’t hover for beans, but it was fun to watch him try. Half a dozen chickadees, a veritable Christmas tree of goldfinches, some downy woodpeckers and titmice joined a pair of white-breasted nuthatches eating seeds at the feeders and drinking from the pond.

Then a small brown bird slipped unobtrusively down the bark of the honey locust to pick around in the rocks of the herb garden. It searched each flowerpot and walking onion looking earnestly for something to eat. It was a house wren, probably the one that spent the summer ferociously defending the bridge to the barn. It seemed out of place among all the tame seed feeders, but I enjoyed watching it as it jerked its way around the pond eating whatever it found there.

Blogger Beta ain't Mo Betta

To all my friends who would like to comment here, but can't, or are are wondering why I haven't commented on their blogs....it wasn't me.....Blogger Beta strikes again.

So FC I am sorry about that. And Karen, nobody should have days like that, although I guess everybody that has animals does now and then. At least here at Northview the rattlesnakes are all over on the mountain on the other side of the river. Big Nose Mountain that is.

(See below)

The mountains here sure aren't the Rockies, but Big Nose is a famous landmark here. The picture isn't the greatest as it was taken from the car on the other side of the river (safe from those infamous snakes.)

Happy 55th Anniversary Mom and Dad

I am so very glad that you met on that blind date so many years ago. Thanks for the good times and for all you taught me!
Love,
Dotter

Ralph "Bucky" Phillips

The low life jail break artist who lately has become the topic of many supportive blog posts from pals and family members is now alleged to have shot two New York State troopers who worked out of our local Troop G at Loudenville. It has been clear from comments on other New York State blogs that people have been laughing at his ability to escape the police and helping him stay on the run.

The police officers were shot from ambush about forty miles from Buffalo...in the back, according to news stories, by armor piercing bullets.


One radio station even started a sort of a joke reward system, making fun of police, and offering such enticements to turning the slime ball in as car window darkening and custom birth announcements. Somehow this has lost its humor as 32-year-old Joseph Longobardo and 38-year-old Donald Baker lie in critical condition, fighting for their lives. I hope they catch him now and I really don't care if they aren't very nice to him.

Wow

You can't imagine how happy I am to find Northview Diary back where it belongs. Last night it went bye-bye and was replaced by an error message. I was surprised to realize how much it means to me to write here, to "talk" to my friends and put my scattered thoughts in order. Due to lack of space and general personal disorganization many of my photos are only here. Not that they are all that spectacular, but I sure would hate to lose them. Ouch.

Sunset today

Barn Fire

This story is about the farm of one of Liz's classmates at college. So terribly sad. Our hearts go out to them.

Pale touch-me-not

Flower

Seed pods

Not so itsy bitsy spider

Blogger beta

Northview Diary was switched to the new beta version of Blogger yesterday. It took most of the day to occur. I find the end result ugly. Dull colors in the template, much loss of photo clarity.

Am I alone in not getting quite as crisp a view?

Committee

Big discussion going on in the kitchen. Bayberry is in season. What bull, what bull? Everyone has an idea and a reason why it is the right one. Rain, Kingpin, Citation R Maple, young sire, proven bull, golden oldie, they can hear the shouting in Fonda. I am staying out of it. I have cows of my own that I need to plan matings for.

I lost one of my favorites this week, sweet little Erin from my Trixy family (pushed in a ditch by other cows, and suffocated from the weight of her stomachs when she couldn't get back up. She was fine at night milking and gone when we went out in the morning. I was sick. Really sick. I cried over a cow for Pete's sake.)

On the other hand, England, from the same family, gave me a pretty heifer calf, which I named "Encore" because she looks a lot like old Dixie. Hope I can raise her. It is heartbreaking to lose a favorite cow and exciting to get a promsing calf. The latter keeps us going, the former makes me at least want to quit. It is one thing when an animal gets sick, but to lose a healthy vibrant young one for such a stupid reason. Bah. Cows are not the sweet little placid things that a lot of people think they are. They fight like crazy, all the time, because they have a pecking order just like chickens. However, they are a hell of a lot bigger and more dangerous than chickens when they get to squabbling over who's the boss. It gets me everytime I walk by the empty stall with the grain uneaten. Farming can be a bitch.

Close encounters of the vulpine kind

I was on my merry way to the barn this morning, juggling a cup of coffee with cinnamon and whipped cream in one hand and my bright yellow and red Scottish lion umbrella in the other when I got a big surprise. A large cat seemed to be slipping between the two green tubular metal gates that keep the cows in the cow yard. I could see immediately that it was not one of our cats, because although it was the right shade of grey, but it was orangy brown too.

It neatly threaded its way between the gates, obviously a habit, as it moved so neatly, and ran straight to my feet....whereupon I darned near tossed the coffee one way and the brolly the other.

Because it was no cat, it was a grey fox. It was as startled as I was and did a 90 degree turn, claws scrabbling in the stony path and vanished into the tall weeds of the heifer barnyard. The encounter didn't last ten seconds, but the fox was less than ten feet from me when I realized that he wasn't a cat and he realized that I wasn't ....well, whatever a fox might mistake a middle-aged lady with a gaudy umbrella and a mug of java for. Perhaps a minivan with a bad paint job or something.

I know the goosebumps on my arms didn't subside until halfway through milking. I also now know that the rustling bushes along the walkway that we have been blaming on a woodchuck might just be something much more interesting.

The sun came up in a ball of fire

No Nais.org hits the big time

Congratulations to the anti-National Animal Identification Program website, NoNAIS.org on attracting nationwide mainstream attention to the grassroots movement against this intrusive and expensive program. (I have had a link in the sidebar to the site for quite a while now.)

NoNAIS, run by Walter Jeffries of Sugar Mountain Farm, has done such an excellent job of getting the word out on the problems inherent in the proposed program that his site was mentioned and linked to by Drovers Alert, a mainstream beef producers newsletter, sent out by the well-known magazine Drovers.

It is impressive for a small farmer to do such a fantastic job of getting his ideas out into the public that he manages to reach so many people within and outside the industry. There are a lot of farmers and ranchers very much opposed to national ID, but not too many of them are able to get their opinions out there.

Look mom, no cows

These dark August mornings the cows don’t come down from pasture. Milking time arrives and the barnyard is empty. No big spotted bodies or shiny little horse-chestnut-brown ones either. Not a bovine to be seen.

No Mandy, no Junie, no Heather or Hattie.
Not Zinnie nor Eland nor Bailey or Ricky. To the top of the silo to the ridge of the barn…now dash away, dash away…no wait a minute, it is too early in the year for that.

What are we to do? Milk late and get nothing done during the day, when we are already far behind from the bad weather in June and July? Or stagger up the hill to get them, in the dark, dodging thistles and late wandering skunks? Which if you take a cow dog along are like a mutt magnet, the first thing the hound comes upon to the benfit of neither dog nor stinker. (Maybe the dogs are just dedicated to herding anything black and white, I don’t know.)

I thought of outfitting the cows with their own personal flashlights. It would take a Rube Goldberg arrangement of batteries and timers to keep them on the cow and turn them on and off at the right times. Perhaps they could be fitted around their necks with collars or harnesses and set to turn on at five AM and off at six thirty. And aimed straight down the cow path (someting of a challenge if you take into consideration the characteristics of cow paths) to light their way home.

With an arrangement like that you would think that they could find their way to the barn before noon anyhow. It would be a big help.

Think it would work?

Garlic chives and lobelia